[172] Parthey, "Die Oase des Jupiter Ammon, Abh. Berl. Akad." 1862, s. 159 ff.
[173] Belzoni, "Narrative," p. 398.
[174] Ritter, "Erdkunde," 2, 1, 397.
[175] Lepsius, "Trinuthis, Z. Aegypt. Sprache," 1874, s. 76 ff.
CHAPTER XII.
THE DEATH OF CAMBYSES.
"When Cambyses returned from Thebes to Memphis," so Herodotus narrates, "Apis appeared to the Egyptians. They put on their best clothes, and made holiday. Cambyses seeing this, formed the opinion that they held the festival because misfortune had happened to him. He summoned the governors of Memphis, and when they came into his presence asked them why the Egyptians had done nothing of this kind when he had been in Memphis before, but only now that he had lost the greater part of his army. They replied that their god had appeared to them, who for a long time had been wont to appear, and when he appeared all the Egyptians were delighted. When Cambyses heard this he said that they lied, and punished them with death. He then sent for the priests, and when they said the same, he said that he would soon ascertain whether a tame deity had appeared to the Egyptians, and commanded them to bring out Apis. Apis was brought out, and Cambyses mad as he was drew his sword. He meant to stab Apis in the belly, but he hit the thigh and said with a laugh to the priests: 'Wretches, are these creatures gods, which have flesh and blood, and feel iron? Such a god is worthy of the Egyptians. But you shall not mock me for nothing,' He gave command to scourge the priests and slay every Egyptian who was found making holiday. In this way the festival came to an end; the priests were punished, the Apis died in the temple of the wound in his thigh, and the priests buried him secretly unknown to Cambyses.[176] But the king remained in Memphis and raged against the Egyptians, the allies, and the Persians. He caused the old sepulchres to be opened and looked at the corpses; he went into the temple of Hephaestus (Ptah, I. 43), and desecrated the image of the god in various ways. He also entered the temple of the Cabiri (belonging to the Phenicians at Memphis, III. 310), which none but the priests may enter, and outraged the images and burned them."[177] Diodorus observes that Cambyses, as was said, took away the Golden Zone in the Ramesseum, which measured 365 cubits, one for each day in the year, and was a cubit thick.[178] Justin tells us quite generally that Cambyses, enraged at the superstition of the Egyptians, gave orders for the destruction of the temples of Apis and the other gods.[179]
In the narrative of Herodotus the best reason given for the wounding of Apis is the vexation of the king at the failure of his campaigns against the Ethiopians and Ammonians, and the refusal of the Phenicians; and the belief that the festival of Apis was merely an excuse for making merry over the blows which had fallen upon him. If Cambyses tells the priests, who exhibit Apis to him as a god who has recently appeared to them, that "they lied," it was very difficult for a worshipper of Auramazda to believe that a young bull was a god, and the highest god, and the "lie" with which Cambyses charges them, seems to be an accurate trait corresponding to the conceptions of the Avesta about the "lying gods," and to the Zoroastrian respect for the truth. There could hardly be a more strongly-marked contrast than between the worship of Auramazda, the creator of heaven and earth, and surrounded by the light spirits of the sky, in which no images were allowed, and the rites of the Egyptians, their worship of numerous images of the most extraordinary form in splendid temples, their adoration of the sacred animals, in which these deities appeared, and were thought to be present,—between their anxious care for the preservation of the corpse, and the eagerness of the Iranians to remove the impure remains of man. Cambyses might in all honesty believe that he was in contact with a stupid worship of idols, a senseless adoration of calves, crocodiles, and serpents, and a nation of "liars."
But if he held such opinions, he did not act on them. If he had outraged the worship of Egypt in the manner represented by the legends of the Egyptians in Herodotus and Justin, the country could hardly have remained at rest after his death, when almost all the other lands rebelled against the Persians. Egyptian inscriptions prove that under Cambyses there was no sort of religious persecution, but quite the reverse. In the tombs of the Apis, on the plateau of Memphis, on the vestibule of the new gallery which Psammetichus had caused to be hollowed out for them, when the old gallery of Ramses II. was filled, we see on a pillar Cambyses adoring the Apis. The inscription tells us: "In the year four, in the month Epiphi, in the reign of Cambyses (Kambathet), the immortal, the god was brought here for the burial which the king ordained for him. A second Apis, the successor of that which was buried, was born, as the inscription of the Apis tombs tells us, on the 28th Tybi, in the fifth year of the reign of Cambyses.[180] Inscriptions found on the statue of an Egyptian, Uzahorsun (at present in the Vatican), tell us that he had been a magistrate under Amasis and Psammenitus (Psamtik III.), and afterwards under Cambyses and Darius. 'When the great prince, the lord of the world, Kambathet,'[181] so we are told in these, 'marched against Egypt, all the nations of the earth were with him.' He became lord of the whole land, and settled therein. He was the great lord of Egypt, the great prince of the whole world, the king of upper and lower Egypt, Ra-mesut (i. e. Ra born again[182]). And his holiness conferred on me the dignity of a counsellor and overseer of the royal gates, and commanded that I should ever be where he was. I brought a complaint before his holiness touching the people who were in the temple of Neith, that they might be driven out, that the temple might be purified and clean as before. His holiness commanded the temple to be purified, and the sacred gifts to be brought as before to Neith, the great mother of the great gods who dwell in Sais. And his holiness commanded to celebrate all the great and little festivals, as had been done before. This his holiness did because he had commanded me to announce to him the greatness of Sais, which is the city of all the gods, who are there enthroned on their seats for ever. When the king of upper and lower Egypt came to Sais, he entered himself into the temple of Neith. He visited the sacred place of her holiness the goddess, as every king had done. His holiness did this on the information which he had received of the greatness of her holiness, who is the mother of the sun himself. His holiness performed all the rites in the temple of Neith. He offered a libation of the lord of Eternity (Osiris) in the inner chamber of the temple of Neith, as all kings had done before him. On the command of his holiness, the worship of Neith, the great mother of the gods, was re-established in all its completeness for ever. I have provided the sacred worship of Neith, the lady of Sais, with all good things, as a good servant does for his master. I have re-established the priests in their office, and on the command of the king have given them rich possessions to be their own for ever. I have erected a good sepulchre for him who was without a coffin. I was a good citizen of my city. I have caused its children to live. I have set up all their houses; I have shown them every kindness as a father for his son. I have rescued their population, when disaster fell upon their canton, at a time when there was great calamity in all the land. Never did such calamity fall upon their land before."[183]